1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image capturing apparatus having a wireless communication function, and an image capturing method employing said image capturing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Today, an image capturing apparatus having a wireless communication function has been proposed. This image capturing apparatus records captured image data in an internal or removable storage medium (hereinafter referred to as a storage medium of an image capturing apparatus) and transfers the recorded image data to an external apparatus by wireless communication. This is, for instance, disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (KOKAI) No. 11-284894. For the external apparatus, for instance, a personal computer (PC) is used. According to the image capturing apparatus proposed by Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (KOKAI) No. 11-284894, image capturing can be performed without being confined by the storage capacity of a storage medium of an image capturing apparatus. The reason is in that, since an external apparatus normally comprises a storage device having a much larger capacity than that of the storage medium of the image capturing apparatus, captured image data that has been transferred to the external apparatus can be deleted from the storage medium of the image capturing apparatus.
Further proposed is an image capturing apparatus having a plurality of media (storage media) slots for sequentially recording captured image data in a plurality of media in accordance with media insertion order (e.g., Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (KOKAI) No. 2001-169224). According to the image capturing apparatus proposed by Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (KOKAI) No. 2001-169224, a user is able to perform image capturing without being conscious about which storage medium the captured image data is to be recorded.
In the image capturing apparatus according to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (KOKAI) No. 11-284894, as mentioned above deletion of transferred image data from a storage medium enables image capturing without confinement of the storage capacity of the medium. However, as recent years have seen an increased number of pixels in image capturing apparatuses and improved serial-shooting capability, there is a case where the image data transfer speed cannot catch up with the image data generation speed. Furthermore, there are user's demands for not deleting the transferred image data from a storage medium considering a case where wireless image data transfer is not properly performed. In this case, a storage medium that has exhausted its capacity needs to be exchanged to a new storage medium. However, in the image capturing apparatus proposed by Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (KOKAI) No. 11-284894, image data recorded in the storage medium is transferred to an external apparatus by wireless communication. Therefore, even if the storage medium exhausts its capacity, the storage medium cannot be exchanged until the transfer is completed. Generally since wireless communication requires relatively long time, a user cannot perform image capturing for relatively long time.
Meanwhile; in the image capturing apparatus according to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (KOKAI) No. 2001-169224, even if one storage medium has exhausted its full capacity, another storage medium can record image data; therefore, a user can continue image capturing. However, wireless communication of image data is not considered.
Furthermore, neither Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (KOKAI) No. 11-284894 nor No. 2001-169224 considers an image capturing apparatus that can record one same image data in a plurality of storage media and transfer the image data by wireless communication.
The present invention has been proposed in view of the above-described situation, and is characterized by providing a technique employed in an image capturing apparatus having a wireless communication function, which enables a user to continue image capturing even if the storage medium within the image capturing apparatus becomes full during image data transfer via wireless communication.